


In Which the Time is Too Early

by OrnateOtter



Series: Of Soulmates and Timing [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Awkward Conversations, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Darcyland, F/M, First Meetings, Rated for occasional language, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Teenager Darcy Lewis, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has Issues, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrnateOtter/pseuds/OrnateOtter
Summary: Hollywood likes to pretend that soulmates are all sunshine and rainbows, guaranteed happy-ending, True Wuv 4ever, and that Fate has some kind of Grand Plan all figured out for everyone. . .well, Darcy can't say she's all that surprised when she sees for herself that it's all a big fat lie.Sometimes, Fate screws up.Sometimes, the timing is completely off the mark.Sometimes, two souls are brought together and nothing comes out of it.Or:That one night in Vegas when two soulmates exchanged their words, and neither of them was ready for it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Words on my skin, love in my heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759835) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview). 



> Alternate Universe in which the first words you say to your soulmate are written on their skin, and which was, of course, inspired by amusewithaview's amazing series, Nothing But Love In View.
> 
> If you haven't read it I highly recommend it!

No matter what the news and officials said, being born and raised in the seedier parts of Vegas wasn’t all bad.

Sure, it had its downsides. Darcy was intimately familiar with all of them, being the bastard child of one of the city’s many prostitutes, but she generally preferred to concentrate on the more positive aspects. After all, when one lived in a crappy place, there was no need to constantly obsess over all the ways said place was crappy, right?

For example. She was street smart, more so than a great many adults she saw on a daily basis.

Granted, that wasn’t an innate talent so much as one acquired out of a need for survival. What with her mother’s occupation and various past-times (that all involved far too much alcohol), the now fourteen-year-old girl had spent most of her childhood as far as she could manage from their apartment, whether in school, the public library or reading comics at Moose’s.

She knew her neighborhood in a way she’d never know any other place—each corner, each cranny, each ‘out of business’ dusty window and each still-there-but-barely-holding-on ones. The local shop owners who managed to keep their business running despite the rough times all knew her by name. Less reputably, Darcy also knew all the local dealers, small-time ones and ring-leaders, but more practically, how to avoid them and through which alleys to cut through so she wouldn’t find herself in even more dangerous territory.

Really, it was no surprise he caught her attention as soon as she caught sight of him from a distance.

He stood out, with his flashy custom-made suit, his designer sunglasses and his Italian leather shoes. He stood out, like that super fancy Swiss-made wristwatch in Fred’s pawnshop that he had proudly showed Darcy after he bought it a pittance off a homeless guy.

And the closer Darcy came to him, the more out of place he looked.

Also quite obviously hungover—thanks to her mother, Darcy had learned to recognize the signs before she even started school.

Sitting down on the edge of the sidewalk, he was glaring down almost petulantly at the small bright orange plastic bottle that he was trying to pry open with clumsy fingers. Hadn’t the scene looked so familiar, Darcy would have listened to the most basic common sense and gone on her way. Hadn’t he reminded her so clearly of her mother (the woman regularly ended up in much the same fight with the safety-openings of pill bottles) she would have gone straight home. She’d certainly done it before. But something in this man urged her to stop.

The idea struck her that, unlike her mother, he didn’t have anyone to help him out and once the image was stuck in her head, her mother in a similar situation in a neighborhood where she didn’t know anyone, she felt too sorry to keep walking.

Catching sight of Jewls (little rat of a druggie, no balls and no heart, but his ‘buddies’ were too dangerous to mess with him) lurking around the corner, was the deciding factor.

Despite all her hard-earned street-common-sense, Darcy came to a stop a few feet away from him. He didn’t even notice. There was something vaguely familiar about him, his dark hair, his carefully styled goatee and his obnoxiously blue suit. . .but the sunglasses obscured too much of his face for her to know for sure.

“ _Hey, need a hand with that?_ ” she asked gently, hoping to get his attention without startling him (hungover people could be touchy at the best of times).

He didn’t answer immediately, but Darcy knew he’d heard her because he froze as soon as the words had left her mouth.

His entire body, hunched over and clad in fabrics more expensive than her entire wardrobe, went perfectly still for so long Darcy started seriously wondering if the guy wasn’t high rather than simply drunk. She waited though. And finally, he slowly brought a hand up, lifting his large sunglasses until they were perched on top of his messy hair, and turned his head towards her.

She didn’t recognize him at first.

First, her eyes met his, dark—so very dark—like the coal she’d used in art class only hours before, and her breath hitched at the intensity she found there and the completely unexpected way it rattled something deep inside her. Distantly she felt that he looked even more familiar, but it took a few seconds before her heart (she hadn’t even felt it start racing inside her chest) slowed and she managed to gather back her thoughts. For an instant, so very short and at the same time interminable, there was nothing in her mind other than his eyes.

Only second, once her brain got over the shock and rebooted, came the realization that his face was regularly plastered all over the front pages of the trashy magazines her mother liked so much.

The one and only Tony Stark, right in front of her, in her neighborhood—was he lost?!

“ _You know_ ,” the older man said, voice quiet and rough, words ever-so-slightly slurred, “ _I always thought the tone would be a lot breathier. Or at the very least more suggestive_.”

And, just like that, his earlier freezing was explained as Darcy froze in turn.

“Oh,” she finally uttered.

“Yeah, oh,” the older man echoed a bit wryly. His eyes, still sharp despite the dark shadows under them, trailed over her form critically, from her toes in their beat-up sneakers, up to her head topped with a knitted beanie that Mrs. Jacobsen from the third floor had made for her. And when he was done, Darcy couldn’t tell if he was disappointed in what he found or not. “Jesus, kid, how old are you?”

Darcy snorted. “Old enough to know better than to answer that question.”

“Ooh, look at that, she snarks,” the dark-haired man drawled, eyebrows rising high up on his forehead. “And here I was afraid this was going to be awkward, what with the obvious age difference.”

Feeling emboldened by the lack of outright rejection (considering how far apart they were in age, in hindsight she would have expected a freak-out of massive proportions), Darcy took a seat on the ground next to him. Without waiting for his reaction, she snatched the pill bottle from his hands and easily popped it open. “Do you have some water to help these go down?” she asked as she handed it back to him.

He only winked and swallowed a couple of pills—dry. Darcy was reluctantly impressed.

For several long minutes, they sat there, watching the occasional car driving down the street and the shadows of people walking past the lit shopfronts on the other side of the road. They didn’t utter a word.

Darcy was much too preoccupied with that new development, that a famous (not in a good way, if the tabloids were to be trusted) older guy was apparently her soulmate. She guessed said soulmate was either mulling over the question too, or nursing such a bad hangover he couldn’t be bothered to talk.

“So,” he finally spoke up after a while. Since no other words were forthcoming, Darcy turned to find him staring at her confusedly. “Isn’t it past your bedtime already? What are you doing out here?”

Rather than take offense at the careless words, the teenaged girl decided to use her hard-earned patience. Fourteen years living with her mother had taught her how to handle moody drunk people—and the aftermath as well. “It’s not even six yet,” she retorted easily. “What about you? What brought you here? The nearest casino is a good ten-minute drive away.”

Tony Stark grunted. “I’m not sure. . .” He shot a look down to the bottle in his hands and his calloused fingers started fiddling with the lid again.

“Dude, you’ve had enough,” Darcy remonstrated and plucked the pills from his grasp before he did something stupid. The sluggishness in his movements was unmistakable. “Are you drunk?”

“You know, I think I still am,” he confirmed with a nod. He shot a look at the expensive-looking watch on his wrist and a contrite little moue tugged at the corners of his lips. “And it’s been eleven hours since I had that nightcap with- what was it Christie? Kirstie? Katie? Whatever—I think I’m drunk and hungover at the same time. I am not enjoying this at all.”

“Well, you’re in luck: I know just the thing to help!” Darcy swiftly rose to her feet, taking a couple of steps away before turning back to the older man and fixing him with an imperious stare. “Stay here. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He blinked. “Wait, where are you going again?” he asked.

“What you need right now is food—greasy, salty, tasty hangover food,” Darcy explained. “And there’s the perfect Mexican joint for hangover food just around that corner. So I’m going to get us both some dinner: you obviously could use it, and I haven’t had anything since breakfast this morning.”

And after making sure he wasn’t going to leave while she had her back turned, Darcy ran the short distance up to Tito’s.

As she’d promised, she was back five minutes later with two piping-hot quesadillas, filled to bursting with complimentary cheese and guacamole. To her confused relief, Tony was still sitting exactly where she’d left him. He was trying to rub some kind of stain from the top of his left shoe with the pad of his thumb, and he was so absorbed in the menial task he mercifully didn’t notice Darcy at first—didn’t see the expression on her face when she spotted him, her happiness that he hadn’t vanished in the short while she’d been gone. She got a hold back of her emotions quickly enough though and sat next him.

When Tony Stark groaned at the smell of the food that she was brandishing under his nose, she grinned widely.

“You’re like the little hangover fairy,” he said and quickly ripped the top of the foil. “You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of something hidden in that Mary Poppins bag of yours?”

“I could get you a bottle alright,” Darcy shrugged, thoughts flittering to her mother’s stash before coming back to Tony Stark’s fame and wealth. “But it’s pretty cheap stuff—I don’t think you’d like it.”

It looked like the older man hadn’t heard her, too entranced by his food. He bit into his quesadilla while Darcy was still talking and let out a low moan as he munched enthusiastically on his first mouthful. Darcy took it in stride and promptly tucked into her own dinner, and if they didn’t speak for the next few minutes, that was fine with her.

“This is like magic,” he muttered, licking some sauce that had dripped onto his fingers. Carefully, Darcy handed him a paper tissue she’d fished from her pocket, mindful of not making too big of a mess with her own food. “I feel better already. You’ve got to be a little hangover fairy.”

Darcy shrugged. “Whatever you say,” she told him between two bites.

It took almost a minute before he spoke up again. “But seriously, how’d you know? The food, the pills. . .” He shot her a shrewd look, much more alert than Darcy had expected considering he’d been running on fumes until only minutes before. “I can’t believe school has changed so much since I’ve been there that they’d have Drink Ed now. Or if they do I’ve seriously missed out.”

“No,” Darcy huffed, the barest hint of a laugh. “No Drink Ed—and don’t let anybody hear you say that ever.”

He blinked at her. “Then why are you doing this?”

“You needed help.” It was the simplest explanation she could manage. Now that it was done, she was starting to suspect something more might have been at work in urging her to help the random drunk guy on the street on her way back home. She’d never thought overly much about it before, but it could have been this ‘Fate’ her mother kept talking about all the time, that inexorably pulled destined halves together when the time was right.

“Hmm, you know, I may not be in possession of my full mental capacities right now, but even I know you’re not supposed to talk to drunk strangers out in the streets at night.” He took a hearty bite out of his quesadilla, and continued talking with his mouth full. It was fairly disgusting. “Now, as a general rule, I don’t judge. I’m no judger—I’m not even good role-model material. But, I can’t help but notice-” he shot her a pointed look “-you’re a girl, you’re tiny, you’re out on the streets at night on your own and you’re talking to a drunk stranger. Kid, you have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, do you?”

And it might have been wishful thinking, but Darcy couldn’t help but see concern on his face and hear it in his tone. It made something warm in her chest and she smiled a bit more genuinely at him. “Well, it can’t be such a bad thing, since I met you,” she said tentatively.

But rather than smile back, he looked away and didn’t talk again until he’d finished his food. “Right. I guess I didn’t hallucinate that part, huh?”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t—unless the both of us had some sort of collective hallucination.”

All his previous light-heartedness was gone (though there was no way for Darcy to know if his previous casual demeanor had been genuine or faked) and Darcy kept her tone quiet and careful in kind. Knowing, from that unofficial protocol all newly-acquainted soulmates were supposed to follow, that it was time to confirm their match, she quickly pulled up the sleeves of her jacket and sweater, and unbuttoned the simple cotton cuff that covered her right wrist.

Feeling a surprising amount of trepidation in the pit of her stomach, she extended it towards the man by her side so he could see the Mark clearly.

“Huh, would you look at that.”

She had no way to know whether that was a positive assessment or not, and he offered no further words to make his inner thoughts any clearer. Feeling uncomfortably self-conscious and uncertain, Darcy promptly retracted her arm and pulled on the sleeve of her hoodie until her hand was all but disappearing under the hem (and her mark was once again concealed). She quickly finished her food, and she was about to throw the crumbled bit of foil away, but Tony Stark grabbed it from her hands instead and unsteadily got to his feet.

In a few wobbly strides, he disposed of the garbage in the nearest trashcan and then came back to sit next to her. Without a word, he opened the right cuff of his shirt, exposing the words written on his skin, and showed them to her.

_Hey, need a hand with that?_

It was her hand-writing—the loop of the y, the hastily scribbled arches of the m, the dot of the i that wasn’t quite above the i. It was more easily decipherable than the scribbles on her own wrist, sure, but compared to her soulmate’s scrawl, it looked. . .well, definitely very childish.

In and out of themselves, their compared hands didn’t mean much, but the sight of them made Darcy realize very abruptly how ill-suited they were to each other.

“My writing needs some work,” she mused tonelessly.

The Rich And Famous New-Yorker, and the No-Name Stripper’s Kid. Even as a simple fourteen-year-old, whose life expertise didn’t extend beyond the limits of her neighborhood, Darcy knew there was something funny in that sentence (and not in a good way).

“It’s fine,” Stark shrugged, obviously not noticing her sudden epiphany, or her inner turmoil. “Easier to read than mine. My PAs are always on my ass about it—supposedly they can’t read my notes.”

“What’s a PA?” Darcy asked curiously, glad for the change of subject.

“Personal Assistant,” he told her with a grin that looked distinctly mischievous. “They do stuff for you, like pick up your coffee, your dry-cleaning, take care of the paperwork you don’t want to do.”

The teenaged girl frowned. “It sounds like a crappy job.” And for her, that was very diplomatically put.

“Well, PAs are supposed to have more responsibilities I think. Obie’s PA does lots of stuff: answers the phone, runs around all the time, handles some meetings even. Obie says he’s competent, but I think the guy’s no fun. All I ask from my PAs is to be female, less than thirty, and good-looking. As long as they have gorgeous long legs, all the rest is secondary.”

And there really wasn’t much that Darcy could say to that, so she stayed silent. It was a few, very awkward (at least on her part) seconds before the adult at her side let out a long sigh.

“Shit, I’m fucking this up already. . .”

Confused by the sudden outburst, Darcy shot him a confused look. “Why?”

Wry black eyes turned her way. “Isn’t it against the Soulmate Code or something, to talk to your theoretical better half about other women?”

“Well, dude, as a first, you’d need to get your hands on a code for meeting your teenager soulmate. I mean, so far this isn’t your typical First Meeting, isn’t it? I’m fourteen and you’re. . .What? Thirty?”

“Thirty-three,” Stark snorted and promptly let his head drop until it was hidden between his knees. “Fourteen. . .Fuck. . .”

“Yup. Nineteen years. That’s a big gap.”

For some reason, her words prompted the man to snort again. “Shit.” He lifted his head back up and looked straight at her then.

His eyes were definitely more alert, Darcy was pleased to note. Whatever it was, that had urged her to stop and talk to him earlier, settled at the sight of his alcohol level visibly receding now that his stomach was full. (Who would’ve thought? She’d never been one to believe in fairy tales, but maybe there really was something that pulled two soulmates together after all. Else, why would she care so much about a virtual stranger? Why would she feel responsible for helping him?)

He stared at her hard—a few seconds at most, but to Darcy it felt like an eternity. And she couldn’t look away for an instant.

“You know, I’m the first to admit that I’m an asshole,” he said at last. “And I’m irresponsible. And I drink and party too much. And I sleep around. But the tabloids were lying about that point: I don’t touch underage girls—that’s just messed up. And you’re cute and all, but you’re about ten years too young for me. You know what I mean, right?”

“Relax,” Darcy smirked. His words cut deep, although he obviously didn’t mean them to, but the nervous fidgeting of his fingers wasn’t faked. She focused on that—that one hint that he was just as lost as she was in this situation—and put her own insecurities aside for a moment. “I’m not going to handcuff myself to you and drag you to the nearest chapel, you know. Like you said, I’m too young for you: not only is that illegal, but I do have plans of my own that I want to see through before I start thinking about marriage. Getting out of this place is the first thing on my list.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he groaned. His shoulders visibly drooped, even under the padding of his suit that was supposed to make him look larger. “I know that for a kid like you, I’m as good as ancient, but I’m not ready for the whole Soulmate-Life-Commitment-Thing. Boys just wanna have fun and all that crap.”

Darcy rolled her eyes good-humoredly. “Yeah, I got that from the whole PA recruitment requirements.”

She got a surprisingly approving grin at that one. “Sassy,” he said appreciatively.

“My specialty,” Darcy deadpanned. Granted, he was the first one to think it was a good thing. “But my teachers tell me I’m still young enough that there’s a good chance I’ll grow out of it.”

“Teachers!” Tony Stark exclaimed with a sharp, barking laugh that left absolutely no doubt what exactly he thought about teachers. “They’re just jealous because they’re sheep: they follow the flock, they don’t know how to do anything else.”

“Because we do?” Darcy retorted disbelievingly.

“Obviously!” Stark gave her a pout when she only stared at him, completely unimpressed. “I’m a genius, a playboy, a billionaire and CEO of a world-wide corporation: I don’t follow, I set the trends.”

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh a little at his brazen assurance. She’d never met someone so self-confident before, so unashamedly arrogant really, and most of all so effortlessly charming. And although he was too old in her eyes for Darcy to find him truly attractive (other than the famous soulmate-instant-connection thing: so far they were getting along rather well) she could clearly see where he got his playboy reputation from. And it was precisely this attitude more than his words that truly drove it home.

Her soulmate was a thirty-three year old adult man, and a particularly accomplished and successful one at that.

(She didn’t dare to imagine what she must look like in his eyes.)

“Good for you,” she muttered, suddenly feeling very tiny and immature next to Tony Stark. A gentle jab of his elbow in her ribs promptly put an end to that line of thought.

“Why the long face?” he mock-grumbled. “You’re my soulmate or aren’t you?”

“I believe we’ve already established that I am.”

He snickered at her sass and teasingly flicked her nose. “Then it’s very clear to me: you’re no sheep either.”

“You shouldn’t try to bullshit a kid born and raised in Vegas,” she retorted, unmoved (and offended too; she was smart enough to know when people were trying to butter her up, and it always annoyed her).

“What language!” he gasped, his indignation obviously faked to amuse her. “And I’m offended. Why would you think I’m trying to bullshit you? I’m your soulmate—don’t I get a little automatic credit or something?”

“Fine. Without the language this time. You don’t have to bother with the empty flattery: we met like ten minutes ago.”

“And it’s been a very enlightening ten minutes, don’t you think?” But he quickly relented before her pointed look. “Fine, fine. I don’t remember other fourteen-year-olds being so bossy when I was in school—what the hell do they put in those crappy lunch Mystery Meat sandwiches these days?”

If his increasing words-per-minute count was any indication, he was almost over his lingering drunkenness. It made his sharp mind even more obvious, all the more to Darcy. Sitting next to him, she was a front-row witness to the way his eyes were gradually lighting up more and more brightly, his hands moving with more animation as he talked. . .

“And for future reference,” he went on, sticking his nose up in the air with an offended sniff, “I don’t do empty flattery. I have more than enough money that I can get away with telling people what I think about them directly to their face.”

“So why would you say I’m not a sheep?”

“Because, jailbait, as impractical as it is that we met now, when you’re so young and I’m-” he paused for a fraction of a second, as if looking for the right words, “-sooo not ready for this whole Fated Meeting thing, the fact remains that we’re soulmates. And I can guarantee you: my soulmate is no sheep. Otherwise there’s just no way we’d be bonded-” He cut himself off abruptly and shivered, before shaking his head. “Fuck, that’s messed up. Will be bonded, I mean. When you’re a lot older. Maybe.”

Once again, the off-handed way he spoke clearly told Darcy he didn’t intend for his words to be hurtful.

Still, she didn’t see the point of Fate bringing two soulmates together when one of the pair was too young, while the other found the whole thing creepy.

Of course, she’d always known there was little to no romanticism to be found between soulmates beyond the whole glamour constructed by Hollywood and modern popular culture. She’d never joined in the exited whispers when her classmates talked about their words and what their soulmates would be like. She was an unwilling witness to the repeated train wreck of a relationship (if it could even be called that) between her mother and her soulmate, Darcy’s genitor that she refused to call her father.

Unlike most kids her age, she knew what the reality of soulmates could be. She’d never believed, like the girls in her school did, that her soulmate would come to sweep her off her feet and take her far away. That didn’t mean a little part of her hadn’t been hoping for something nice, though.

On the (somewhat) brighter side of things, she wouldn’t be forgetting that night anytime soon: no one would have. Not when their soulmate turned out to be a famous, drunk and womanizing rich guy.

. . .

A famous, drunk and womanizing rich guy who’d ended up in this part of town, and looked so out of place it was the very reason why she’d stopped in the first place.

Before even taking a quick look around, she could see that they still had an audience—Jewls, standing vigil at his usual corner, and the cashier from the drug store who was staring at them through the front window. But those two were only the visible ones.

No matter that he was an adult, somewhat athletic man (the lines of his shoulders didn’t lie, Darcy recognized them from seeing similar ones at her school on the jocks of the football team). He was still drunk, obviously not well, and hence an easy target for anyone with bad intentions. Thankfully, the hour wasn’t late enough that the truly dangerous ones were out prowling, but that was typically the sort of things soulmates were supposed to be worried about.

Darcy was certainly worried.

“You should go,” she finally told him after a few minutes of silence.

“Only ten minutes in my company and you already want me gone, shortcake?” Stark retorted, shooting her a small glare. “That’s gotta be some kind of record.”

Despite her annoyance at the nickname, Darcy felt herself soften at the hurt in his eyes—hidden behind that ever-present layer of sarcasm and detachment, but well and truly there if you cared to look for it. “It’s not that,” she told him more gently. “But this isn’t exactly a great neighborhood and you’re attracting attention.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I always attract attention,” Tony chuckled, turning smug. “Comes with being who I am.”

Darcy couldn’t help but find it fascinating how his emotions flittered from one to the next, almost as fast as his thought process, but shook off the realization to concentrate on the matter at hand. “Yeah, well, the attention I’m talking about here ain’t really the good type,” she drawled, hoping to convey just how unimpressed she was. “You’re a rich and famous guy in a crappy part of town—aren’t you the least bit worried?”

He snorted. “Anyone tries to touch me without my say so and I have enough money to make their life come to a virtual end.” He nodded decisively. “Don’t worry, buttercup. My lawyers are better than sharks—they’re demons.”

“And you criticized me for my sense of self-preservation.” She rolled her eyes. “You need a cab. Can you call a cab? I don’t have a phone.”

“You don’t have a phone?” he gasped. “You poor, deprived, sweet child! What are your parents thinking not to let you have a phone?”

They didn’t think much, as things were.

Darcy scowled severely: Mrs. Stanley, her favorite teacher ever from fifth grade, had always managed to silence even the most recalcitrant children when she did that. The teenager was hoping it would work on the older man sitting next to her—no such luck though. “Not everybody was lucky enough to be born with loads of money waiting for them in bank accounts,” she shot back.

“Well, luckily for you, shorty, I have plenty! What phone do you want? I can order it and have it delivered tomorrow first thing in the morning. I’d give you something from Stark Industries, but we’re a weapons company and we don’t do phones. . .Or maybe I could make one. Phones are so boring I never bothered before, but I could build a better one—best on the market, higher definition for the screen and the camera, more interesting games, better range-”

“Tony, we’re getting off topic, here!” More than her tone, she had a feeling it was her using his name for the first time that made his eyes snap back to hers. “You should really call a cab. Or is there a friend that could come and pick you up?”

He sighed a little, and the almost feverish glint in his dark pupils softened a little. “I have much better, kid. I’m obscenely rich: I have a driver.” And with an overly grand flourish of his hand, he fished out a brand new, slick cellphone from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Hey, Happy!” he exclaimed after a few seconds. “Yeah, sorry for dumping you last night, there was this chick—Carlie, Cassy or whatever—and we decided to ditch the party and-” his eyes flittered back to hers for a fraction of a second and he visibly deflated. “But never mind that. So I am in this horribly boring part of town. There are no casinos, no chapels, no Elvis and no flashy lights. I need you to come and pick me up. . .Oh, yeah?. . .Great, see you in five!”

“How is he going to find you?” Darcy asked curiously (it was either that, or ask him about why his driver’s nickname was ‘happy’). “You didn’t even give him a street name.” She was half expecting him to answer something along the lines of ‘the power of money’ and was understandably surprised when he took her question entirely seriously.

“He’s tracking my phone.” He grinned when he saw her eyes widen. “Pretty basic stuff. I built him a laptop to make up for Ibiza last year, because I kind of made it hell for him—he’s my bodyguard too, you know, so he doesn’t like it when I hit the parties on my own.”

“Why didn’t he use it to find you earlier?”

“I keep him updated: he knew I wasn’t alone until. . .” He quickly checked a very shiny watch on his wrist. “. . .an hour ago. Huh. Time flies. Anyway, he was already on his way to pick me up so he’s only a five minutes away.”

Darcy barely resisted the urge to flinch when she heard how close the car was. She hadn’t realized, when she asked him if he had anyone to take him away, that she had so little time left to talk with him.

What were you supposed to do when your newly-met soulmate was about to leave, go back to what might as well have been another world? Should she ask him to stay in touch? Even though he said he didn’t want a soulmate? Was that considered too pushy? Was she supposed to say nothing at all and be content with that?

Chasing best as she could the abrupt onslaught of questions, the young girl decided to change the subject for the moment. “How’s your head feel?”

“Terrible—better than when I woke up, but terrible.” His tone then shifted from an almost pained groan to a stern tone Darcy hadn’t expected from him. “Trust me, kid. Never mix tequila, vodka and whisky. It never ends well.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” And she truly wasn’t. Growing up with a drunk meant that Darcy had a warier outlook on alcohol than most teenagers her age. She didn’t see that change anytime soon, all the more that her soulmate might have just as complicated a relationship to liquor as her mother did.

The adult man cleared his throat awkwardly. “Good. . .So. . .You’re not disappointed or anything, right?”

Darcy blinked, taken by surprise at the abrupt change of subject. “Erm. . .Why would I be disappointed?”

“Well, you know,” he said vaguely and shrugged. “I’m an old man. I’m a drunk and a womanizer. I live in New York and Malibu and I almost never come to Vegas. . .And I basically don’t really want a soulmate.”

That answered her earlier questions.

Despite the fact that she’d been half-expecting it, Darcy couldn’t help but feel such a rush of disappointment that it was almost painful. She swallowed to try and get rid of the sensation in her throat, like there suddenly was a big lump there that made it harder to swallow and breathe, and forced herself to remain silent for a few seconds so she wouldn’t do or say anything that she might regret.

She was tougher than that—her mother was a mean drunk; her father made an appearance every other year and he wasn’t much better. She’d basically been raising herself for the past six or seven years and she wasn’t scared of being on her own (she’d never imagined the very real prospect of spending the rest of her life similarly alone could be so daunting though).

And she’d never let herself put much faith in soulmates after all.

“Can I ask why?” she asked, making such an effort to keep her tone calm that it came out practically arctic.

“It’s nothing personal, kid,” Stark immediately told her, shifting uneasily as if he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. “Sure, you’re way too young for me, but from what I can tell, you’re a pretty cool little teacup—I like the sass, really I do. But even if you were ten years older at least, I’m not a one-woman kinda guy. And that’s what soulmates are all about, right? Find your better half, commit for the rest of your life and live until the end of your days as one happy couple and all that bunch of fated crap.” He grimaced a little. “That’s not me, you know?”

Darcy didn’t answer immediately.

She remembered what her mother had told her a long time ago. She was only four or five then, and Celia Lewis wasn’t quite so deep down the bottle yet, and actually took the time to put her to bed and kiss her goodnight. She’d explained, after Darcy asked why her mother always waited for Jake and never questioned his prolonged absences, that soulmates were what the other needed. For better or for worse, soulmates completed each other in the ways their other half needed it, even if it meant waiting.

Fleetingly, the teenaged girl wondered if that meant her soulmate needed her to simply not be there at all.

“I understand,” she said. And she truly did. Although the realization was hurtful and more than a little disappointing, there was nothing to be done about it. She was too young, too different, too insignificant to hold any sort of appeal for a soulmate nineteen years older than herself, much less a man like Tony Stark who didn’t want to be tied down in any way. There were no promises she could make to him, no guesses she could venture about what he’d want from her that would convince him not to leave and forget about her.

“You. . .do?” The tone, a mixture of hesitance and disbelief, as if he couldn’t quite realize she was ready to accept his rejection, made her smile despite herself.

“I remember that class from eighth grade,” she told him. “Our history teacher, Mr. Grady, was telling us about the major social advances from the twentieth century: women’s right to vote, the end of segregation, and the right for soulmates to choose whether or not they wanted to be bonded to their partner. Pretty much all the girls in our class thought it was stupid—who would want to live without your destined soulmate, right?”

The dark-haired man shot her a strange look. “I’m guessing you didn’t think the same.”

“I’ve seen my parents. I know that soulmates aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. And I really wouldn’t want to be stuck like my mom—she’s the most miserable person I know and she can’t get away.” She shot Tony a wry smile. “We just met, but I don’t want to make anyone miserable, least of all you.”

A heavy silence fell between them.

Darcy felt like she’d handled the situation decently and said all she had to say, but her acceptance somehow seemed to make Tony Stark more uncomfortable. His eyes flittered all over her face before they settled on his fidgeting hands, his lips pursed in a tight and straight line.

“Well, now I feel like a complete ass,” he muttered.

“You shouldn’t,” Darcy assured him. Despite her disappointment, she even managed to muster a smile. “I really mean it. If whatever you’re doing makes you happy, then, I’ve got nothing to say.”

The older man huffed slightly—like he was holding back a laugh or something, Darcy couldn’t quite tell. “I’m the adult here. I should be the reasonable one.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m a freakin’ genius,” Darcy deadpanned with a roll heavenwards of her eyes.

“Well, that’s a given since you’re my soulmate.” At Darcy’s pointed look—didn’t he just tell her he didn’t want her?—he raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Hey, I think soulmates are overrated too, but that’s because the whole romantic thing is overdone. I mean. I don’t believe in all that happily-ever-after bullshit, just like I don’t believe in monogamy. But there must be some kind of reason why we get words tattooed on our skin from the moment we’re born, right?”

The nuance he was hinting at intrigued Darcy: so far, she’d only ever had two perspectives on soulmates. The first being her parents, who had as dysfunctional a relationship as it was possible to have, with her mother drinking and waiting and her bonded soulmate dropping by for a few days, each time after a longer absence. And the second being her classmates’ naïve fawning over words they hadn’t even heard yet, and how amazingly romantic their First Meeting would be. Both were, as Tony put it, a ‘romantic thing’.

Considering Darcy had always thought of herself as sharper than most teenagers her age, it stung a little that it didn’t occur to her earlier that there must have been other point of views about soulmates.

Other than the fourteen-year-olds’ Tru Wuv 4ever that is.

She didn’t have time to ask the older man about what he meant in more details though, because at that precise moment, a very shiny, very foreign, very expensive looking car stopped in front of them. As she swallowed back the questions on the tip of her tongue, she watched Tony grin widely and painstakingly get to his feet.

“Happy, my man!” he greeted boisterously when a man in a dark grey suit got out of the driver’s seat.

“Sorry for the wait, sir.”

Only when he walked around the car did Darcy see why the man was a bodyguard. He was built like few men were, large, obviously imposing and heavy even under the tailored lines of his suit—and not in an overweight kind of way either. He looked like he could have picked her up with his pinky finger and lifted her several feet above the ground.

She was suitably cowed and promptly clambered to her feet.

“Here,” the man (strangely nicknamed Happy because the look he shot her was anything but happy) said and handed a plastic bag to Tony. “I picked up some food on the way. Thought you’d need it.”

“Ah, you know me so well!” The billionaire snatched up the bag and quickly fished out a sandwich that he bit into right away. Finding Darcy looking at him disbelievingly, his shoulders hunched up almost defensively. “What? The Mexican food was great and everything, but I haven’t had anything since dinner yesterday. I’m still hungry.”

When the bodyguard loudly cleared his throat, both billionaire and teenager turned to find him looking expectantly at Tony.

“Oh, right,” the dark-haired thirty-something man said. “Happy, meet the Hangover Fairy. Kid, meet Happy.”

“Hogan,” the bodyguard added, which Darcy deduced must have been his last name.

“Happy Hogan?” she repeated slowly. As weird a name as it was, at least she wouldn’t be forgetting it anytime soon.

“He used to be a professional boxer,” Tony said, looking strangely proud of that fact (and earning himself a wry glance from his bodyguard). “Really good one too.”

“Oh, wow,” she mused, and understood then where he’d gotten his muscles from. “Old Hal used to box too. You’re bigger than him—but that could be because he’s ancient. Were you a heavy-weight fighter?”

The long-haired man nodded and smiled a little, posture relaxing ever so slightly. “Came to Vegas for a few fights too,” he told her.

Darcy beamed, and, deciding she liked this Happy Hogan quite a bit, extended her hand in a more formal greeting. “That’s majorly cool! I’m Darcy by the way.”

“Darcy,” Tony repeated slowly, eyes lighting up in interest. “Unusual name for a girl, right? No-phone-Darcy. Are your parents some kind of Victorian-reenacting, no-technology-allowed weirdoes or something?” At the blank look Darcy and Happy gave him, the billionaire simply shrugged and shot his bodyguard a wide-eyed look. “Can you believe it? What sort of fourteen-year-old kid doesn’t have a cellphone?”

“You and I didn’t have cellphones when we were fourteen,” the ex-boxer shrugged, unperturbed by his boss’s concerns.

“I mean now, obviously.” The dark-haired man let out an indignant huff and promptly dismissed the bodyguard to turn back to Darcy. “Speaking of, we were talking earlier about me getting you a cell before we got side-tracked. What kind? You can have any phone you want—except for Apple. Don’t say Apple. If you say Apple I’ll scream, I swear. I have a thing against Steve Jobs—don’t ask the story because I’ll never tell.”

Darcy couldn’t help but grin a little at his tone and shook her head. “There’s no need to buy me a phone,” she said calmly.

Tony frowned ominously. “Seriously? You bought me food earlier. I might be a grade-A jerk but I wasn’t raised in a barn: I’m trying to say thank you here.”

“Then just say thank you,” Darcy shrugged. “Because buying me a phone is downright excessive compared to cheap Mexican fast-food.”

In other circumstances she might have already given in, just so they wouldn’t argue. Had it been any random drunk guy but Tony.

Because he’d said he didn’t want a soulmate. Because he hadn’t introduced her to Happy (a bodyguard with whom he obviously got along very well) as his newly met soulmate but as a simple kid who’d stopped to help. Because he hadn’t asked for her name before she offered it to someone else.

And maybe it was her hard-earned street-smarts speaking (or maybe some kind of darker, more pessimistic, particularly fatalistic side of her she hadn’t been aware of before) but she couldn’t help but seeing the phone as some sort of bribe. A way for the immensely rich man to buy the silence of the younger soulmate he didn’t want, like she was superficial enough to be pacified by a gadget. Or maybe a superficial charitable action to pacify his own conscience, because rejecting your soulmate without trying to get to know them was still heavily frowned upon, no matter how rich you were.

She was undoubtedly overthinking the whole thing—he might have really wanted to simply offer her a cellphone just because he could and thought it was an appropriate thank you gift.

“Teacup, I’m really starting to feel terrible,” Tony went on, not noticing her wariness. “And at the same time I don’t want to encourage you to chat with random strangers in the street.”

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Darcy smiled a bit thinly, eager to see this subject done and over with. If her friends ever heard about this they’d never forgive her for passing up on a free phone. “And if that’s not enough, we can also go with the I’m-a-street-rat explanation: in my world it’s suspicious when someone offers you free stuff. People could think you’re propositioning me.”

The full-body shudder that Tony gave was almost comical. “Oh, sh- I mean, crap! The visuals! Alright then, no phone! And to preempt any talk of propositioning, I’ll just say ‘thank you’ and be done with the thanking. Though, I gotta tell you, kiddo, never thought I’d see the day when someone would say no to free stuff.”

“Right, I’m just special that way,” Darcy drawled. In her head though, she really meant ‘stupid’, because she was passing a free phone for a reason she wasn’t entirely sure off, while at the same time letting her soulmate go.

But Tony seemed to know what she was thinking, and shot her a surprisingly approving smile before turning on his heels and throwing open the car’s door. “Anyway!” he exclaimed and threw the plastic bag and what was left of his sandwich on the backseat (genuine, buttery-soft leather, Darcy noted unsurprised). “Happy, how soon can the jet be ready? I wanna get back to Malibu tonight: I have a party I need to get to tonight and I want to spend some decent quality-time with my workshop first.”

“I’ll call the crew and let them know to be ready for you.”

With a last curious look to Darcy, the bodyguard held the back door wide open for Tony as the billionaire stretched his arms above his head. A couple of things audibly popped in his back and the goateed man groaned a little while mumbling something about electronics he needed to order before he got to the airport so they’d be waiting for him once he got to his mansion in Malibu.

Darcy more or less expected it to be the end. Tony would climb inside the car and it all would be over, and at first, as the thirty-three-year-old got in without so much as a glance backwards, it looked like she was right.

But as soon as he was seated, legs stretched out in front of him, pants wrinkled, jacket wide open and button-up shirt slightly askew (in short, looking every bit like a rich guy who’d just finished a particularly wild party), he looked right at Darcy. Once again subjected to his single-minded and piercing focus, the teenager wasn’t sure whether to be relieved her soulmate wasn’t just going to drive away without saying goodbye, or if she just wanted the whole experience to finally be done and over with.

Wasn’t it a bit cruel to prolong this moment still? Her First Meeting with her Destined Half—and the only one she’d ever get, too, if Tony Stark had anything to say about it apparently.

“So. . .” he said slowly. The moment was awkward, but Darcy couldn’t really blame that on him. How were you supposed to say goodbye to the fourteen soulmate you didn’t want anyway? “Thanks again for the help, poppet. But let’s agree on this for future reference: no more trying to help random drunk strangers on the streets at night, alright?”

Darcy only shrugged and didn’t say a word. Despite her best efforts to maintain appearances that she was a strong kid and that she was cool with this, dammit! her throat was closing up again and her eyes were stinging with the oncoming tears. Even though she kept her eyes looking down at the old pavement under her feet, she had no doubt both Stark and his bodyguard could see she was about to cry.

She didn’t even know why. She wasn’t supposed to be so affected by this. She’d always been smarter than the other kids at school. She’d known for a long time that soulmates didn’t always work out.

But she was only just starting to fully realize that she’d met her soulmate (and that he was an adult and rich and intelligent and famous and so much more important than she could grasp), the man whose words she’d worn on her skin since she was born.

And already he was leaving and she was never going to see him again.

There were a couple of seconds during which Tony Stark visibly hesitated. The silence was heavy and uncomfortable, and the billionaire was fidgeting in his seat, visibly undecided as to what he should do. But since Darcy wasn’t saying anything else and he had nothing further to tell her, his discomfort with her imminent crying finally won over and he slammed the door shut.

Her view of Tony Stark, abruptly obscured by a heavily tinted window that hid him from view completely, snapped Darcy back to reality. With considerable effort, she managed to swallow back the lump in her throat and wiped the tears with the sleeve of her old jacket.

The bodyguard, Happy Hogan, was still there too and didn’t leave immediately.

He shot a visibly suspicious look at the street around them before turning to her. “You’ll be alright, kid?” he asked.

He seemed genuinely concerned too, and Darcy was touched to see it (and also a bit disappointed it hadn’t come from Stark himself). “Sure, my house is right around the corner,” she answered and even managed a small smile.

“Alright then.”

And that was it.

She watched in silence as the former professional boxer in his fancy suit walked around the car to his seat and swiftly climbed in. Less than a second later, the engine was coming to life with a purr—a sound almost incongruous in a neighborhood like this—before seamlessly pulling over and into the slow traffic.

Only a few heartbeats later, the car was completely gone, indiscernible in the mass of cars that drove along the street.

It was all very anticlimactic, so much so that it left Darcy reeling under the weight of what had happened. She had met her soulmate. She had lived the one moment the whole world agreed as the most important and defining in a person’s life. And it was already over.

Only a few minutes, apparently the most important thing she’d ever experience, and it was all over so fast she was left with the distant feeling that it had all been some kind of dream. Or a hallucination.

She felt numb, alarmingly so. And she also felt lost, which made no sense because she knew the neighborhood like the back of her hand.

No doubt she would have stood right where she was for a good while longer if not for Jewls: that creep had left his corner and was heading straight for her. And although Darcy wasn’t scared of him per say (he was a junkie, too skinny and sickly to be very dangerous) his friends were the dangerous kind of people she didn’t want hearing about Tony Stark chatting with her while waiting for his driver to pick him up.

She pushed it all back, ignoring the hollow feeling in her chest for the moment, and scampering away before the small-time dealer could reach her.

If later that night she locked herself up in her room, and didn’t go to school the next day, well, no one noticed much. Or at least, her mother certainly didn’t notice, not when she spent the night and most of the next day passed out on the couch, with empty bottles littering the ground all around.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first fanfic I publish on Ao3 and I'm feeling a little nervous--good nervous.
> 
> I know the Tony/Darcy pairing is unusual (and I do so love Pepperoni) but I've read a couple of fics on Ao3, and since then I can't help but ship them a lot more than I'd imagined I would. All the more that I've re-watched the first Iron Man movie recently, and I'm actually really starting to like the idea of Pepper and Phil Coulson together: is that an amazing potential power couple or what?
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy this little piece. It's been sitting on my computer for a couple months, and the continuation is currently in the works (I won't try to make any promises for when that will be posted though).
> 
> Since I'm not American and I've never been to Vegas, don't hesitate to let me know if anything in this oneshot doesn't make sense to you. I welcome any feedback you might have.
> 
> Thanks for reading, guys!


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